


Buds will be roses

by middlemarch



Category: Little Women (2019), Little Women Series - Louisa May Alcott
Genre: F/M, Late Night Conversations, Married Life, Memories, Parties, Romance, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21987646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Meg went to Vanity Fair.
Relationships: John Brooke & Theodore Laurence, John Brooke/Margaret March
Comments: 6
Kudos: 63





	Buds will be roses

“I would have liked to have seen you at that ball, the one you and Laurie call Vanity Fair,” John said. They’d been married two months and it was very late or it was very early and they were awake, lying together in their bed talking. It was a part of marriage Meg had not imagined, one which would have made her blush when she was engaged; it was exceedingly pleasant and she could not do without it, no matter how she might rue the sleep lost when she was faced with the baking or the careful laundering of John’s shirts in the morning.

“No, you shouldn’t have. I was a terrible hoyden, preening, altogether too concerned with whether my flounces were in order and whether I might lose one of Belle Moffat’s pearl ear-bobs,” Meg said. It was easier to be honest in the moonlight.

“ _Were_ your flounces straight?” John asked. He also pulled her closer, which might have disturbed the flounces on her nightdress if her nightdress had any frills or flounces (it did not) or if she were wearing the nightdress. It lay, decidedly out of any order, in a small heap somewhere near the foot of the bed. 

“They were silly, nearly as silly as the girl who wore them,” Meg said.

“You’re very hard on yourself, dearest. People go to balls for the pleasure of them—music and dancing and fine clothes, flowers and ices…I’ve not much experience of them, but I know that to be true,” John said. He didn’t sound disappointed or embarrassed by the strictures forced upon him by his poverty, not as she had been and sometimes still was.

“Why would you have liked to see me there?” Meg asked.

“I would have been allowed to look at you,” John said. “Properly-- acceptably. Not skulking about, Laurie’s old tutor hiding in the shadows, always reminding him to get back to his books, keeping your glove in his vest pocket.”

“You would not have liked me so well, if you had seen me. Laurie didn’t,” Meg said.

“Laurie was a fool,” John said calmly. “Just as with his Latin and mathematics, he didn’t grasp what he didn’t know. What did he understand of being a young woman, a gentlewoman working for her living, of the rarity of luxury? I wouldn’t have judged you so harshly for enjoying riches, I’ve known what it is to want them.”

“You did? You do?” John, with his simple tastes and his reason, his high principles and his generosity to others—did he long for something more, for ease and pleasure?

“I have everything I want,” he said, shifting so he looked down at her. His hair was mussed and his blue eyes were very dark, very tender. She reached up to pull him closer, whispering, just before she kissed him,

“You weren’t old and you never skulked.”

He laughed and then she did too and then they did not, together, as the moonlight drew back her silvery skirts like a waltzing girl.


End file.
